Category: Faith

The real lesson in Hannah’s story is her worry about a situation in her life that needed healing. She could not have children, and it was a constant source of worry, hurt, and concern

In the bible, God leaves on record the story of a woman named Hannah. She was the mother of the great prophet Samuel. On its surface, it’s the story of how Samuel was dedicated to the Lord from birth. The real lesson in Hannah’s story is her worry about a situation that needed healing. She could not have children, and it was a constant source of worry, hurt, and concern.

find great comfort in the scriptures telling me not to worry about my everyday life. What I will eat, wear, or how I will live.

That’s not giving up on life; it’s trusting God with my life.

Most people that believe in God will tell you that there’s no limit to what God can do. He can exceed what we ask him to do. Most people have experienced God working on their behalf. And still, each time, we’ve been pleasantly surprised when God works to the fullest. We testify and shout until the next time God’s divine hand shows itself in a big way in our lives. That’s us. We love when God does something great for us and yes, he deserves the praise.

I believe there’s a part of us that often feels unworthy. So when God does show out on our behalf we’re not only humbled and but also surprised. Think about this: if we are children of the King and obedient to his will, we have every right to believe he will perform miracles for us. Sometimes after the miracle happens, I will say to myself, “I knew he would,” but it’s those in-between stages before he DOES IT that I often worry. Continue reading “Why Do We Worry?”

When it comes to true religion, the right concept is always in the back our brains, yet the principle can quickly be snuffed out by our surroundings. The Bible defines true religion as being free from the world and loving others as we love ourselves. Continue reading “The Lightbulb”

I heard a well-known pastor in my denomination say publicly “Sometimes I find that people when they’re on their own, have stronger faith than those who are in a local congregation.”He went on to explain.

“Folks may be by themselves for various reasons, like too far from a church or something, and they want to obey God, they’re sincere for God, and they obey Him without any interferences. But when they become part of a church, most people become more concerned about what my friends think and what’s Sallie gotta say about it, and disobey God and become spiritually weak.”

Yeah, he said it, and I’m saying it too.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been involved in wonderful, uplifting church services. I almost felt lifted to heavenly places by the atmosphere and the music. I’ve met good people, and seen good examples of spirituality but church must remain in its proper biblical place.

If you’re deeply involved in a neighborhood church, you have to prioritize and keep God first. I’ve seen many a Christian lose touch with God going to church faithfully, every Sunday. When you ask them if God has revealed his purpose for in the kingdom, they seem lost. Gathering with othersthat love Christ can be wonderful if you don’t let attending church and church culture replace your walk with God.

A local church is a body of baptized believers in Jesus Christ. Gatherings of Christians in ancient times took place traditionally on the day Christ rose from the dead and usually in synagogues or house groups since the first Christians were Jewish and were used to this tradition. We’ve carried this tradition on since the time of the Apostles. Most churches gather once a week for worship. In theory, these gatherings and assemblies of Christians are supposed to be a place where you can hear the word of God preached, learn more about scripture, grow and gather with other Christians to build one another up and serve one another. Back then, Christians and non-Christians were the only groups that existed and the non-Christians were broken up into a variety of institutions of worship. There were no right-wing Christians or moderates, just Christians.

Now, we have hundreds of Christians groups worldwide and even more splinters of those and so many churches in the United States (at last count from Christianity Today there are 384,000 Christian congregations in the U.S.), that it’s hard to keep track.

The whole idea of the gospel is to bring man back to right relationship with God, and open the way to direct communication with God. Somewhere in all this religion, spirituality and inner communion with the Almighty may tend to get lost. I believe this is why Jesus warned the disciples so sternly to avoid the “doctrine” of the Pharisees. Not because he didn’t believe in the Law, not at all. He came to fulfill the law. Jesus warned against practicing their brand of religion. In short, Judaism at the time consisted of a lot of man-made rules that the Pharisees themselves didn’t even follow. (See Matthew 15, Matthew 23 for Jesus’s criticisms of the religious systems of the time). It’s not religious practices that are wrong, the book of James talks about practices of “true religion”. It’s when religious practices are developed arbitrarily and are held as if you’ll drop into hell if you don’t follow them.

For me, if you can’t cover that practice with scripture..um…what are you doing?

THINK ON THIS….
Church, pastors, priests, ministers should not be mediators between you and God.

Some Christians put the institution of the local church and all that is attached to it on the wrong level of importance. Why? Well, because this is the one thing they can physically see, and we humans tend to put more faith in the tangible.

So if “Pastor says…”, then should I do it, even if it doesn’t make any sense biblically? I’ve heard people reason themselves into obeying things that their Pastor can’t even explain with the bible. In some cases WON’T explain and just tells them to obey. Often people get so wrapped up in church-iosity they don’t even study or examine what they are taught.

That type of religion stinks.

Our Personal Walk

According to the scriptures is Jesus Christ himself is our only mediator. He’s the only one worthy of that status as the Son of God. The Hebrew religion already had its, priest and rabbis who, by God’s temporary design, stood as mediators between Israel and God.

But when Christ died, as those who are familiar with the evidence know, the veil of the temple was split from top to bottom. (Matthew 27:50). God tore this 60-foot veil that took 300 priests to move. No human could have done that. For Christians, this symbolizes that God had destroyed the barrier between God and man through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We no longer had to go through human mediators. Christ became our righteousness, our way to reach God.

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. 2 Cor 5:21

In short, no human stands between you and God. God made that clear on the day Christ died.

Often we use our Pastor, or minister or other, fellow Christians as symbolic Old Testament priests.

By placing their opinions and rules above the word and the leading of God, by default, we give them that place. They now become in practice the Levitical priesthood. We imagine and they often do too, that somehow we need their approval for God’s divine favor. It can be deadly to spiritual awareness and our spiritual walk.

Our dependence on the human aspect of religion is what weakens us. We’ll look at our local church communities as the voice of God and replace God’s voice with opinions and rules. We may feel that God will not tell a person a person anything that is not sanctioned by a pastor or other Christians in our circle. The feeling of close community is where we have to be cautious. We can begin to lose the beauty of faith and walking with God when we place people on a pedestal.

It had gotten so bad in specific segments of our denomination that even if someone wanted to wear their hair a particular way if the Pastor didn’t like it or someone of prominence had a problem with it, that hairstyle had to go. Wow! Whenever anyone starts to take the place of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we should respectfully decline to accept masks of divine authority. Whatever God tells us to let go or remove from our lives should be a voluntary act of love. Anything else will be phony and only done to perpetuate a particular image and possibly just the comfort of others.

We weaken ourselves when we don’t live our spiritual lives authentically as God speaks to us. We lose our Enoch-experience. Hebrews 11:5 says that Enoch pleased God. Enoch believed God and loved God, and this was before the Laws of Moses, and any rules instituted as Christian law, so what does that say about what’s necessary to commune with God?

Next time, let’s talk about Romans 14 and its lessons on what’s truly important to God.

Hello everyone! Happy Independence day. I’ve been super busy with new things going on in my life. I’ve got a new speaking engagement coming up, and me and my husband have started a relationship coaching business. I’ll also do spiritual/life coaching. I’m working on an online bible study based on my book too. Man, I’ve got lots of work to do, not to mention a new grandbaby, helping my daughter and my two sons. One’s gone off to college and the other is starting his junior year in high school and on two sports teams. BUT only one is out of the house. They are learning and starting their lives and mom’s got to be there.

Hubby and I did a photo shoot and things are looking up for us

Half of the time I look like this…

It’s ok. God is doing new and wonderful things in our lives.

But the subject today is man-made religion. Here’s my thought.

I venture to say that most people if given a choice between church traditions and the Bible will choose church customs every time. This is because I believe people are more comfortable doing what the next man does over belief in something they cannot see. People prefer stability, and if someone is telling them what to do in all areas of their life, this often represents security for them. Often people come to God ready to love Him fully and obey whatever He tells them. This can be obeying what they see in black and white in the bible or just in their intuitive relationship with the Spirit of God. However, when they join a church (it doesn’t matter which belief persuasion) they run into the wall of church tradition. Very rarely do we find a church that allows people to just obey God as he speaks to them. In some way, they will they have to conform to a set of rules that some person has created. You understand that once you tie yourself to church rules, it’s not the bible that reigns, it’s the authority of the person that makes the rules.

This is why I often speak about spiritual awareness. Each of us came from God Almighty. All of us were born bent toward sin and sinful ways. Christ provided the way back to God by paying the ultimate sacrifice for our sins, forgiving us and removing any barriers to God through His Atonement. So why do we feel that unless we are tethered to a church building, we are missing out on a relationship with God?

Don’t get me wrong, I believe, strongly that church community is important. It offers us an opportunity to gather with other like-minded people who follow Christ. It gives a sense of belonging to those that follow the bible and it’s a time we can assemble with other Christians and worship and tell what God has done in our lives and share about his goodness. This is all very fulfilling and necessary for spiritual growth. We edify one another and certainly how can we do this at home or alone.

And yet, when God’s people come together, Satan often joins the party as well. More often than not, Christian gatherings can become a place where good followers of Christ can get sidetracked from God’s goals for their lives. Good people will fall into the trap of “you must do it THIS way” to be a good Christian. And the end result is that we begin to follow man more than God. We find ourselves being more concerned with what people think of us more than God’s view of us. We become more concerned with being called a good brother or sister according to the dictates of a man-influenced dogma, than being called God’s dear child.

So this Independence Day. Let’s declare of our freedom from man-dominated worship and vow to get in REAL connection with God himself.

As a minister, I’ve seen a repeated decline in spirituality from people that live their spiritual lives dependent on other people’s approval. True spirituality requires independence. Everyone must be free to follow his leading and obey His Spirit. Jesus plainly told the disciples, that they would have individual responsibilities to Him in their walk with God. Responsibilities others in their Christian community may not understand. But how many of us have the courage and confidence to move forward? We see this in the last chapter of John, when Peter, after receiving instruction that he should simply follow Jesus, turned and ask Jesus what would another disciple (John) do?

22 Jesus said to him, “If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow Me!”

This is where we have our struggles! And sure enough, shortly after that, the disciples started a rumor that Jesus said, John would not die. A rumor, a false one, about what Jesus said! This was not what He said, but people start rumors in church all the time don’t they? They know half of a story and fill in the rest with speculation—that’s just how folks are. Our walk with God is as individual as our fingerprints. So make a commitment to follow JUST JESUS and live as JUST A CHILD OF GOD without –isms and –tarians and –ologies and simply Follow Him!

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Renee

I am an author, spiritual counselor, minister, and Bible teacher. My passion since going through my own battles with spiritual abuse and self-reflection is spiritual awareness. So often we go to church and are still not aware of our disconnection with our true selves. The person inside that God deeply values. My husband and I have been married for over 30 years and have 3 children. I love gourmet cooking, swimming, all kinds of music and political and religious discussion- the two things my mom said never to talk about at the dinner table.